Ghost
by foolondahill17
Summary: A ten-year-old Hawkeye forgets how to trust his father.


Title: Ghost

Summary: A ten-year-old Hawkeye forgets how to trust his father.

Author's Note: I apologize; this is really sad. I don't know what got into me.

* * *

_"__One morning when I was ten, my dad made me breakfast. A bowl of cornflakes. And I asked him why Mom wasn't making breakfast that morning. And he said she wasn't feeling well, but it was nothing. And a few days later, he made me scrambled eggs and bacon and said that Mom was in the hospital, but it was nothing to worry about. By the time Dad was up to French toast and sausages, Mom was gone."_

* * *

They get back from the funeral and it's just the two of them, house empty and gaping. Wooden floorboards, damp from the salt and sea-water in the air, creak more than Hawkeye ever heard before.

He is aware of an absence so tangible, so solid it is a presence, a ghost that dodges him behind every corner, whose gentle footsteps squeak up the stairs, whose silvery laugh mocks him from her empty bedroom with that large and empty bed, unslept in for the weeks that she was in the hospital and his father unable to sleep in it without her and so would collapse on the couch downstairs. Many a time Hawkeye would tip-toe through the living room, unable to sleep, to cover his father with that faded, worn quilted blanket made by a grandmother he can't remember.

It's late November and cold, the kind of hidden chill that creeps below the wind, weaving into everything, turning to ice and bitter winter everything it touches. The trees have already lost their leaves, the rolling land around them once flushed and fevered with color has changed to skeletal, gray, and desolate. The clouds ache overhead, drooping heavily, covering the sun, muffling. The wind whistles through the empty, rattling tree branches and through the cracked windowpanes in the attic.

Hawkeye stands with his back pressed up against the paneled wall behind him, collar of his coat pressing into the back of his neck, woolen cap pulled tightly over his ears, fingers sweating in his mittens. Hawkeye watches as his father pulls off his boots with his toes, hangs his own jacket on one of the curved hooks above Hawkeye's head, and drapes his scarf over his hanging jacket. His father's movements are weighted and heavy, slow like he's very tired after a night of birthing babies, checking fevers, measuring out medicine onto a spoon.

Bitter air drifts through the crack below the door. Hawkeye's father drags his feet toward the small dining room stuffed with a patchwork table too big for it and a large, glass-windowed secretary holding delicate china mugs and plates with blue flowers that matched the color of her eyes. Hawkeye's father's eyes are murky brown, webbed with red, drooping and covered with film.

His father walks to the secretary, pulls open a bottom drawer where they keep the tablecloths for when company comes over, and untangles a thin bottle from the lace and linen. He straightens up and pops open the glass cabinet, reaching with his long arm for one of the crystal glasses on the top shelf. His movements are measured and precise, carried out slowly as if he's checking a body for broken bones. Hawkeye can remember falling out of the large oak tree in their front lawn and his father's long and cold fingers running carefully down his chest searching for cracked ribs, gently holding open his eyelids to check for a concussion.

The pop of the cork is like a gunshot, rattling through the air, echoing in the house, rebounding off the walls of Hawkeye's skull. His fingers curl into fists inside his mittens. He feels cold and doesn't want to take off his jacket. He realizes he's shaking. He grits his teeth to try to get himself to stop, watching as his father patiently taps the glass onto the tabletop, poring the liquid into it from the mouth of the bottle, burgundy liquor swirling behind the buckled crystal glass, sloshing softly like the water lapping against the docks in the harbor.

Hawkeye's father doesn't look at him. It's as though Hawkeye has dissolved into the woodwork, become transparent to his father's eyes, disappeared, floats on the cold, musty, damp air in the empty house. Hawkeye realizes there are other ghosts swarming, swooping, and filling up every crack and crevice.

Dead, lost laughter echoes off the wooden walls. A child's primary colored toys lay scattered across the braided rug, untouched, unmoving, silent, and somber. Smiling faces float above the table, the echo of a fork and knife clattering against a plate, dreams and unspoken hopes waft over the floor like mist, music filtering mutely through the air, dust stirred by the swish of her skirt, the sprightly clap of his father's shoes upon the floor, the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen, warm crackling fire and heavy smells of garlic, parsley, and clam chowder on Fridays.

Mrs. Gillis is coming over with soup later.

Slowly, meticulously, silently, Hawkeye unbuttons his jacket and unties the laces of his boots. He leaves his coat lying in a folded pile beneath the hooks too high on the wall he can't reach. He pulls his mittens off with his teeth and yanks his hat off his head, black hair clinging to the knitted fabric with tingling static electricity.

His father pulls a chair out from the table and carefully folds his long legs over the seat. His thin fingers wind around the cup and brings the brim to his lips. He swallows, Adams apple bobbing. Hawkeye watches. His eyes sting so he blinks. His father takes another sip, sets the glass down on the table with a snap and covers his eyes with his pale, spidery hands.

Hawkeye hears the screech of the first step beneath his heels before he realizes he's walking up the stairs, away from his father with his head in his hands and disappearing liquor down his throat, away from the pulsing silence, away from the tightening in his throat and chest as he reminds himself to breathe, in and out, breathe, like the waves rippling on the pebbly shore.

Her room draws him like a magnet, dragging his feet against their will across the wooden floor. It is empty and untouched, frozen in time, and unaware. Her music box, earrings, and hair brush are on the dresser just where she last touched them. Her bed is made, coverlet in vivid greens and yellows of spring and happier times, bright smiles, freshly baked cookies, and whispered promises. Light filters weakly through the lace curtains covering the window. The wind rattles the pane, like something trying to get in or something trying to get out.

The air is heavy. There's dust covering her hairbrush, dust covering the frame and smiles of the three people in the picture propped up beside the clock. Her pillow is still indented, like her head only lay there that morning. Hawkeye wonders if it's still warm, if maybe he can search the sea of white linen to find a lock of her familiar brown hair, press his cheek against her pillow and breathe her in, smell her, wrap himself in her blankets and feel the warmth of her arms.

Her closet is open. Her clothes hang in neat rows, cheerful colors, neatly pressed, long sleeved sweaters and dresses to prepare for the coming winter, just as he watched her unpack and hang them carefully from the trunk at the foot of the bed. The smell of mothballs and disuse spills from the closet, open for who knows how long, from the last time her fingers brushed the hanging clothes, the last time she pulled her blouse over her head, left her nightgown in the basket on the floor to wash later, someday…someday.

He crosses the room unconsciously and rubs his cheek against the sleeve of one of her sweaters. He closes his eyes and breaths deeply until he feels light-headed, trying to capture the light scent of her skin trapped in the fibers of the fabric. Trying to rediscover those mysteries that had held him so enamored, so enraptured in her presence, her glorious love and peace that spilled from her pores, that surely still clung to the strings of her clothes, that spilled from the closet, invaded her bedroom, the house, chilling and heavy and tantalizingly _there_ but sorely invisible.

He sinks to the floor, nestling himself in the folds of her hanging skirts, breathing, breathing, feeling, hoping for the touch of her soft hand holding his own, her lips pressed to the crown of his head. He tangles his fingers in the nightgown she last wore, piled limply in the laundry basket, wrinkled and covered in dust like everything else. He feels the soft fabric on the hot beds of his fingers and wills himself to remember the warmth in her eyes, the flash of her teeth when she smiled, the sway of her footsteps, the rippling of her laughter, and gentle wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. The way she held her hand to her stomach and whispered of good things to come.

He tries to remember because somehow he can't. He can't remember what she looked like, sounded like, felt like. He can't remember what she'd been because she's been replaced by this yawning hallow, this gaping black hole that refuses to take shape, that refuses to form itself in his mind, to morph back into the solid, breathing, indisputably _living_ person that was she. She's utterly disappeared and all that's left of her is a musty sent of dried perfume and cold, grasping fingers of her ghost that reaches out to him, winding around his shoulders, chilling him to the bone.

He shivers in the curtains of her dresses. He shuts his eyes tighter and nudges the hinges of the door with his sock-covered toes so that the door slips shut with a click. It's all pleasant blackness and familiar emptiness with his eyes shut and when he opens them it's still dark, pitch black except for the line of light spilling from the crack below the door.

He can feel the fabric of her skirts tugging at him. He can feel her cold fingers prodding his arms. He can feel the four walls bending over him, collapsing. Suddenly he feels her beside him, pressed against his shoulder, pale, cold, unmoving, lying on the velvet lining of the coffin, nailed in by the heavy slabs of pine, covered with pounds upon aching pounds of hard, frozen dirt. It's then that he realizes he can't breathe.

His heartbeat is thudding in his ears. Cold, shivering sweat covers his brow, drips between his shoulder blades, slithers down his armpits. His fingers are shaking as he tries to untangle them from the folds of her skirts. He reaches for the doorknob in the darkness, fumbling to get a hold on the cold metal when his palm keeps slipping off because it's covered in sweat.

He twists it. He pulls it. He yanks it. He throws his whole weight into it but the door doesn't open.

"Dad?" His voice is a whisper. It winds through the air and gets tangled in the clothes, muffled until Hawkeye can barely hear it himself.

"Dad?" louder, louder, speak louder! But Hawkeye can't make his voice come up his throat. He hears her laughing, a cruel, steady, wild sound that reminds him of sawing wood and then he feels his chest moving in and out and realizes it's the sound of his own breathing.

"Dad?" He pulls on the doorknob. "Dad, let me out." He twists it, turns it, pummels it. "Dad! Please, Dad!" His fingers are shaking too hard to keep hold of the knob and he pounds his fist against the door. "Dad! Help me, Dad! Help me, please!" He throws his shoulder against the wall, willing the wood to give, willing the hinges to snap off, to – to – "Let me out! Please, let me out! Help, somebody help!"

He's screaming now, but somehow his voice still sounds strangely distant and muffled and he tries to tell himself that it's merely because his father can't hear him, that's why he's not pounding up the stairs, stumbling into the room, throwing open the closet door and gathering Hawkeye into his arms.

"_Dad_, _help_!" Hawkeye screams louder, screams until his throat hurts, screams until his ears ring, strikes the door until his bruises his knuckles and forearms.

The walls are closing in on him. Hawkeye can't breathe. And she's there. She's still there, winding her thin arms around his chest, suffocating him, frigid breath on the back of his neck, blue eyes wide, blank, and staring.

Panic ripples through Hawkeye's body, squeezing his heart in its cold fingers, winding around him so completely that it takes control of him, moving him at its will, throwing him against the door, against the walls, tearing at the clothes so that they get away from him, stop touching him, stop winding around his throat, and brushing his arms like locks of her hair.

"Help! Help! Please, help!" He can hear him. His father has to hear him. Someone has to hear him. Hawkeye can't stand it. He – he has to get out. He has to get out or – or – "Daddy please!" He hasn't called his father daddy in years, since he was at most seven-years-old.

Hawkeye can feel the tears welling in his eyes, slipping hot and fast down his face, catching in his throat and chest, and he doesn't care. He doesn't care. The walls are crushing him. The clothes are swinging off their hangers and burying him, burying him alive just like they did her, hidden by dirt and rock and dust. And she's there. She's there and she's laughing at him, crushing him, cold, dead fingers winding around his neck. He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.

"Mom! Mom, please, help! Help!" _Help. Help. Help. Let him out. Let him out._ "Please!"

He can't breathe. He can't speak anymore. He's screamed his throat hoarse. "_Please_."

He throws his arms over his head and collapses in a heap with the clothes, curling into a tight ball, thighs pressed against his chest, hiding from the collapsing walls, making himself smaller so they can't touch him, so they can't touch him, he can't let them touch him. _Go away. Go away. Go away. _

"Dan? Hawkeye? The door was open –"

"Help. Help. Help," Hawkeye squeaks, hoarsely, dimly, with his mouth pressed against his knees. "Go away. Go away." The walls are dark, heavy, and looming, closing in, getting closer, getting smaller –

"Dan? Where's Hawkeye?"

"Help. Please, help."

"Dan? Look at me, Dan. Where's Hawkeye?"

"Help me. Let me out. Please, make it stop."

He rocks on his heels, trying to make himself smaller, smaller, get away, he has to get away. He can't breathe. The clatter of footsteps on the stairs sounds like the frantic pattering of his heart against his ribs.

"Hawkeye? Hawkeye, where are you, honey?"

His voice explodes out of his chest, "Help! Help! Let me out!" He stuffs his hands over his ears to stop the sound: the choking, gasping sobs that tear up his throat that sound ugly and disfigured. The noise scares him almost as much as the collapsing walls.

The doorknob rattles. The door swings open. Hawkeye spills out in a tangle of dresses, wool sweaters, and bruised limbs, out into the free expanse of chilled, open air and faraway walls and light. She gathers him immediately into her arms, pressing his wet face to her chest, and she holds him, warm, safe, and soothing, rubbing his back with her knuckles. She smells calm and loving and – Hawkeye looks up through his tears and sees it's Mary Gillis, Tommy's mother.

"Shhh, honey, it's alright. You're alright. You were stuck in the closet. You're alright."

For a moment all Hawkeye can do is cry and it's really all so silly because he's nothing but so relieved, so grateful that someone let him out, that someone heard him, that the walls are not crushing him, and that he's back in someone's arms. Her hands are warm through his shirt and hair tickles the back of his neck and her voice caresses his ears in comforting undulations. He's shaking all over and the strange moaning sound is still coming up his throat and he can't seem to stop it.

Heavy feet shuffle outside the door and his father's voice seeps blearily into the room, through the curtain of panic that has shrouded Hawkeye's brain. "Hawkeye? Hawkeye, what happened?"

"He's alright," Mrs. Gillis answers, running her warm fingers through Hawkeye's hair in just the exact way that _she_ used to that Hawkeye can only cry harder, each sob tearing up his throat, racking his shoulders, jerking his chest like convulsions. "He's just had a scare. Where were you, Dan? Who knows how long he was calling."

"I…I didn't know," murmurs his father's voice. His eyes are red and runny. His fingers are shaking. "Oh god, Ben, I didn't know. I'm so sorry." His father crashes to his knees on the wooden floor and wraps his arms around Hawkeye's shoulders, gently pulling him away from Mrs. Gillis.

Hawkeye stuffs his face into his father's stomach, tears streaming, nose running, hardly able to breathe. His father smells like the bitter-sweet tang of alcohol. His arms are heavy over Hawkeye's back. For a frightening, wavering moment Hawkeye feels exactly like he's once again being crushed by the walls inside the closet; his father's warmth and presence is so all-consuming, engulfing, suffocating.

"Ben. Oh, Ben. Please, Ben, I'm so sorry." His father's voice is coarse and broken, whispered into Hawkeye's hair. His father hasn't ever called him Ben before. She used to call him Ben. She didn't like the name Hawkeye.

Someone clears their throat awkwardly from the doorway. Hawkeye peers through blurry eyes under his father's arm and sees it's Tommy, standing with a pot of soup under one arm and a loaf of bread under the other.

Tommy's looking at him, wide-eyed, confused, maybe a little afraid and Hawkeye suddenly feels ashamed that he's let Tommy see him cry. He feels water trickle down the top of his head and knows his father is crying, too.

An unexpected feeling flares violently and suddenly to life in his chest and it takes him a breathless moment to distinguish it from the twisting panic, the sickening heartache, to realize that it's anger. He's angry at his father, for crying, for holding him too tightly, for not holding him tightly enough, for not coming when he called, when he was screaming for help –

He's never been angry at his father before, not really. He's been irritated. He's shouted at him before, in fleeting moments when he thought he was being unfair, but he's never been truly angry, never felt it course through his brain, pounding red hot like blood, blinding, so overpowering it was all he could do to not shake his father's arms away from him and push him away.

Hawkeye sits up, peeling his father's shirt away from his cheek, stuck there by Hawkeye's tears. He props himself up on his heels. He looks away from his father's peering eyes, from Tommy's open mouth, from Mrs. Gillis and her gentle arms, staring at the dresser next to the bed, covered with dust and shattered memories, frozen in time. He roughly brushes his eyes with the backs of his fists. He sniffs loudly and clears his throat.

His voice still seeps through his lips in a hiss. "I'm okay. It was – just that the stupid door closed on me and wouldn't let me out again."

"Sure, honey," says Mrs. Gillis in a sickeningly sugar-coated voice. She brushes her fingers across his shoulder when she gets up. "Come on, Tommy." Tommy is tugged away by his mother back down the stairs, eyes still caught on the back of Hawkeye's head but Hawkeye refuses to look. He stares at the brass handles on the drawers of the dresser, of the braided rug bunched by the side of the bed, of her gray and pink slippers stacked on the floor, to the basket by the side of her bed with a magazine holding knitting patters, yellow yarn and silver needles.

"I'm sorry, Ben. Hawk? Hawkeye, I'm sorry."

"I called for you," Hawkeye's voice is high. His throat hurts and it's hard to get the words passed his lips. "I – I called…"

"I didn't hear you, Hawk. I'm sorry."

_I couldn't hear you. I couldn't hear you because I was_ –

Hawkeye can still smell the alcohol on his father's breath.

_I couldn't hear you because I was lost with her, somewhere else entirely with her and not with you; I'd forgotten you were here, forgotten that you needed me. _

Hawkeye can hear the pots and pans clanking downstairs as Mrs. Gillis warms their soup on the stove. Somehow Hawkeye knows that she's called her husband, she's told him she's staying there until both Hawkeye and his father eat their supper, she doesn't want to leave them alone right now.

Hawkeye can't help but wish she'd leave, take Tommy with her, take her corn and potato soup with her and leave, leave them alone, just the two of them, alone in the gaping house and echoing, drafty rooms that lack her voice as she hummed getting dressed in the morning, dusting the furniture, scrubbing the floors, pruning the shrubs outside by the front door.

Suddenly the house feels so terribly large and vast and mysterious, all those cracks and empty spaces where she lurks, impossible to get away from, impossible to escape, weaved into the woodwork by all the things left unsaid.

Hawkeye's father stands. He lays his hand heavily atop Hawkeye's head and Hawkeye grits his teeth from the effort it takes not to shrug away. The house is large, so large, and the walls are getting smaller every second, leaving room for only the two of them.

Somehow there's only ever been room for the two of them.

His father never has another drink and moves to the guest room down the hall. They pack the baby's crib quietly back in the attic, back where it had sat since Hawkeye learned to climb out of it when he wasn't even two. It's a week and a half before Hawkeye teaches himself how not to tremble when he feels his dad's heavy arms around his shoulders, three weeks before his chest stops tightening in panic. Her presence lingers, touching everything they do, everything they say. Hawkeye forgets the sound of her voice, and forgets the familiar taste of her name coming off his tongue and outside in the gray expanse of dead November –

Outside it begins to snow.

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End


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